4. Mass Tourism

Tourism - Facts and Figures

Neither mass tourism nor the increase of tourism travel between 1950 and 2004 have a model in history.

• In 1950 the total amount of worldwide incoming tourists reached 25.3 million,
• in 1970 it already reached 165.8 million
• in 1990 441 million
• In 2004 a new record of 763.2 million was set with tourist arrivals.

While most of the tourists enter Europe (2004: 416.4 Mio.), the Asian and Pacific regions have experienced the highest rate of increase in tourists - 12.5% between 1950 and 2003.

 

In 2004 nearly half of the tourist arrivals (363.4 Mio.) were accounted for by only 10 countries, and a third by the top 5 - France (75 Mio.), Spain (53.6 Mio.), USA (46.1 Mio.), China (41.8 Mio.) and Italy (37.1 Mio.). Germany was ranked ninth with 20.1 million people arrivals.

The boom of leisure and tourism appears to be unbroken. Even terrorist attacks or natural disasters seem not to be able to stop this development.

According to the increase in tourism travel the revenues of tourism have developed. These increased from 2.1 billion US-Dollar in 1950 to 106.5 billion in 1980 and the phenomenal 622.7 billion in 2004. For this reason, significant funds are injected into local, regional, national and international capital markets for leisure and tourism. Tourism can therefore be seen as a "lead economy" of the 21st century.

• With 326.7 billion US-Dollar the majority of income went again to Europe.
• On second place were North, Middle and South America with 131.7 billion US-Dollar.
• Although the region Asia and Pacific ranked second highest tourist arrival in 2004, it was on third place (125.0 billion. US-Dollar) concerning the income.
• Parallel to the tourist arrivals, the lowest income of tourism travel was obtained in the Middle East (21.0 billion US-Dollar) and Africa (18.3 billion US-Dollar).

No country spent more money on transborder tourism in 2004 than Germany (71.0 billion US-Dollar), the country of the travel world champions. Since the exchange rate of the Euro and US-Dollar changed in favour to the Euro, the USA (65.6 billion) has ranked second. Great Britain spent 55.9 billion US-Dollar.

Out of the ten countries which spend the most on transborder tourism in 2004 per capita, the highest was the Netherlands with 1.014 US-Dollar. Great Britain ranked second with 928 US-Dollar and Germany ranked third with 861 US-Dollar per capita.
(Data source: World Tourism Organization 2005)